WINDOW MAKER LIVE 0.95.7-4
Goodbye and thanks for all the fish!
This is the last and final build still based on Debian/Jessie, which mainly
aims at including the latest updates for this now very mature distribution.
If a newer release based on Debian/Stretch will ever see the light ultimately
depends on funding via donations by its potential future users...
Notable new features include UEFI support, an additional expert installation
mode for more flexible installation needs, the latest Window Maker 0.95.8,
and both kernel versions 3.16.7 and 4.9.30.
WHAT IS NEW SINCE THE LAST RELEASE?
* This release is the last one still built on top of Debian/Jessie.
It can be considered the most mature wmlive release as it contains
the latest updates and security fixes accumulated up until the date
this final wmlive release version was built.
* Parallel support for UEFI has been added. The wmlive ISO is now
usable on both BIOS and UEFI based systems.
* An additional expert installation choice was added to the wmlive
ISO image's boot menu for more detailed installation options.
* The latest Window Maker 0.95.8 is used as default window manager.
As fallback, additionally a minimal xfce4 desktop is included.
* In addition to the standard Debian/Jessie kernel 3.16.7, after the
system has been installed to disk, the backported kernel 4.9.30 will
be available both in the i386 and the amd64 variant.
* Palemoon and Thunderbird are the default applications for web and mail.
Older 32bit systems whose CPU does not support the SSE2 instruction
set will automatically use midori instead of Palemoon as its default
web browser.
* Telegram Desktop is included as mobile messaging application. For
further information, see the https://desktop.telegram.org website.
Older 32bit systems whose CPU does not support the SSE2 instruction
set will automatically default to pidgin as messaging application.
SOME KNOWN ISSUES:
* Due to an unfortunate bug of the Debian/Jessie installer, the setup
of grub fails if no network connection is available to update and
retrieve packages during installation, although the required packages
are already present on the current installation medium. For details
see https://bugs.kali.org/view.php?id=1260
Since we do require grub to be successfully written to the MBR of the
target disk even during offline installation, the Debian installer's
bootloader setup routine was replaced with a script.
This script will automatically install grub to the MBR of the disk
containing the /boot directory, without asking for confirmation.
The original MBR is always saved before to /boot/mbr_backup.img on
the installed system and can be easily restored using the dd command.
This limitation only does not apply if networking and usage of an
external Debian mirror is set up during expert installation mode.
* The initial default init system is sysvinit. For practical reasons,
e.g., to serve as a rescue medium, we have avoided to use systemd
as init default. In order to switch between init systems once
wmlive is installed to disk, use the 'wmlive-initswitch' utility.
* The binaries for Palemoon/Thunderbird/Telegram shipped with wmlive
were directly downloaded from their respective websites and are not
managed via the Debian package management system.
To upgrade any of these programs, manually run their respective
upgrade script (pmoonfetch, tbrdfetch, tlgrmfetch) as root or via
sudo in a terminal window.
* Dialogs of the main wmlive scripts and menus are only in English.
While translation of the user interface is not as complete as users
might wish for, further internationalization requires the practical
contributions of dedicated helpers.
SOME WORDS OF CAUTION
Before you start to install wmlive to disk, please be aware of the following
constraints:
* While finally also UEFI machines are supported, wmlive was so far only
properly tested on BIOS based computers.
* If you plan to use an USB stick instead of a DVD-R for installation, don't
even think trying to create a bootable USB stick from the wmlive ISO image
with something like 'unetbootin' or 'Universal-USB-Installer' or any similar
tool. These tools don't know how to properly handle isobybrid ISO images
and only break their functionality.
The wmlive ISO images are isohybrid images containing an embedded partition
table. They requires to be dumped in raw form to the USB stick to work as
intended. In Linux you would use one of these commands (the # hash sign
represents the shell prompt) to write an ISO to a USB pendrive:
# dd if=wmlive_0.95.7-4_amd64.iso of=/dev/sdx
or
# cat wmlive_0.95.7-4_i386.iso > /dev/sdx
Replace /dev/sdx with the device file name of your actual USB stick.
This process will completely erase it, there is no way back. So be very
careful to not overwrite your hard drive!
If you still depend on Windows, you can use either the dd mode of the
excellent 'rufus' utility from https://rufus.akeo.ie and which can be
found in the tools folder of the wmlive ISO.
* The standard installation procedure is optimized for offline installation,
with the least possible amount of interactivity. This means no network
configuration whatsoever will be performed during the installation stage.
Network configuration will be managed exclusively by NetworkManager on
the running system after successful installation to disk.
* Related to the absent network configuration mentioned above, due to an
unfixed bug in the debian-installer, the grub setup always fails. See
https://bugs.kali.org/view.php?id=1260 for details.
Therefore grub bootlader installation is handled automatically by a
script during the last configuration stages, and which always writes
grub to the MBR of the same disk where /boot resides, without ever
asking for any confirmation. If you can't live with that, please use
the expert mode installation instead.
* The expert mode installation allows for control of almost all aspects
of installation, including proper grub installation once networking and
usage of a debian mirror has been successfully configured.
* A backup of the original MBR can be found at /boot/mbr_backup.img on
the system after installation has completed.
If you find any issue, fault, or simply have any idea for improvement,
please don't hesitate to send a mail to 'wmlive@rumbero.org' to share
your thoughts. We need your feedback to widen our own perspective!
Enjoy Window Maker Live!

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